Simiran Lalvani

Simiran is a doctoral candidate in International Development and a recipient of the Felix Scholarship. Her proposed doctoral project examines foodwork – discovery, production, delivery, and consumption of food and its entanglements with digital technologies in Mumbai, India. Broadly, she is interested in the relationship between informal work, digital technologies and socio-cultural and moral orders. 

Prior to the DPhil, she engaged in qualitative, ethnographic research projects on a freelance basis, briefly worked in qualitative market research and as a lecturer of sociology and anthropology for undergraduate students. She studied the relationship between the digital and social justice at BBC Media Action. At Microsoft Research India, she studied the work of matrimonial matchmakers and astrologers for a future of work study. She examined app-based food delivery work and workers in Mumbai for the ‘Mapping Digital Labour in India’ study at the Centre for Internet and Society. 

In March 2020, she received a scholarship from the Friedrich Ebert Foundation and Trade Union Solidarity Centre of Finland (SASK) to participate in the Global Labour University (GLU) run ‘Union Rights, Policy and Practice: Training for Global Union Activists’ at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. The course was eventually stalled due to covid-19. 

She has a Masters in Development and Labour Studies from the Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies (CISLS), Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi and a Bachelors in Economics and Sociology from St Xavier’s College (Autonomous), Mumbai.